The 2021 claiming window for the YouTube Accrued Royalties Program is well underway. At the beginning of this year – and every year since 2017 – Muserk began the process of claiming sound recordings on YouTube that have generated royalties but are being held for unknown copyright holders. These royalties are now awaiting a link from a rightful owner.

Even though YouTube delivered its share of the $424 million of unclaimed royalties to the MLC, this only represents a fraction of what is awaiting a claim. Because of the wide variety of content formats available across all of YouTube’s products only a portion of YouTube’s music usage is subject to section 115 compulsory licensing handled by the MLC. Therefore the rest of YouTube’s unmatched royalties are claimed and distributed through the YouTube Accrued Royalties Program. 

Muserk’s A.I. matching technology M-MATCH was first deployed as a tool to handle the challenge both the inherent sparseness of the accrued royalty data and its sheer volume. With improvements year over year, and now powered by Muserk’s distributed computing system, M-PAC and M-MATCH,  our rights management team is poised to outdo itself, again.